> Teachers work over the summer, obviously not as much as during the normal school year, but there is summer school, PD and other activities.

Those activities are mostly not part of their usual teaching contract. Summer school in particular is a separate gig -- and how is it even better, according to you, for teachers to strike when they're supposed to be teaching summer school anyway?

More to the point, there's so much less going on then that a strike would be wholly ineffective.

> Yes! The government should’ve done way way more, I blame local districts way more than teachers unions. But at the same time it’s typically 10-20 morons in district/gov doing it. I’m saying the legislation needs to weaken their ability to be that moronic and set up more stringent rules for them to follow in negotiations to prevent work stoppages from that end.

That's a good start, but ultimately the teachers themselves still need leverage for negotiations to be equitable. No set of rules can adequately adapt to changing circumstances forever.

> The parents are only part of a voting populace! What about people without kids? Or whose kids are fully grown or two young? Never mind the fact the don’t directly vote for teacher pay but rather school committee members and even then that’s only ever 2 years. Yes- those elected officials may get voted out, but they are insulated until their next election.

That's just how Democracy works and ultimately we have to find a way to respect the will of the majority without crushing the minority. There's no magic wand we can wave to make everything neat and tidy. We'll need to convince those without kids that voting for more teacher pay -- in whatever form that takes -- is in their best interests. If we can't, well, I guess we just don't get to have public schools then and society will slide into a collapse until everyone else gets the picture that schools are important for everyone. Strikes bring those apocalyptical possibilities to our attention long before they become actualities.

> This isn’t one kid out for a week. It’s an entire district. We just saw what happened when learned is disrupted, students academic performance and learned regressed massively over the pandemic. We saw how important it was to keep kids in school, and students are still clawing out of it. Any loss of learning is a significant loss and I’m saying state government needs to take action to prevent that from happening while protecting and strengthening teachers. Sure, the most recent strike in Woburn MA, was 1 week, but no one knew how long it would be day 1.

One kid or a thousand, a week out still isn't going to cause serious learning loss. The school year simply isn't calibrated that tightly. A few months? Sure, that might cause problems. Sounds like we better give those essential workers what they need to do their essential work rather than prey on their empathy.

> I’m not saying teachers need to be ground to the dirt.

That's absolutely what you're saying by denying them the right to strike, though. That's the inevitable effect of denying them sufficient leverage to advocate for themselves during contract negotiations. Our economic and political systems only function properly if the network of checks and balances is intact, and the ability to strike is a potent check on the power of the employer. Remove that and the only remaining options teachers have are, a) beg, b) quit, or c) die, and we as a society should not be happy about any of those outcomes. What's next, making it illegal for teachers to quit? How Kafkaesque do we want this situation to get?

We need strikes like the Woburn teacher's strike to remind us that these people are not our slaves and that they are doing us a great service that deserves commensurate compensation. They cannot be treated like 14-year-old babysitters, paid $5 an hour plus snacks and no boyfriends/girlfriends over until the kiddos are asleep!